medicare trustees' report
Seniors’ prescription drug costs rise sharply
The cost of covering seniors’ retail prescription drugs started rising sharply this year, according to the annual report that Medicare trustees released Tuesday.
The headline that you probably saw everywhere from that report is that Medicare’s hospital fund is projected to run out of money in about seven years, at which point reimbursements would be cut.
But let’s focus on Part D. Expenditures were about $180 billion in 2025, up from $157 billion the previous year. Spending this year is projected to increase to $218 billion.
While that’s news, policy nerds (like me) were disappointed that the report didn’t say, or even hint at, how much the trustees expect it will cost to cover seniors’ weight-loss drugs in a pilot program, called the Bridge demonstration, that starts next month. The Trump administration failed to get private Medicare insurers to voluntarily offer that coverage, leaving taxpayers to pick up the tab.
“This program will operate outside of the Medicare Part D plan benefit coverage and will result in additional government contributions,” the report states in one of its only passing mentions of the program.
The report does place much of the blame for higher drug spending on the uptake of GLP-1 drugs, as well as other specialty drugs. But that’s far from the sole reason. Democrats’ redesign of Part D also caused disturbances to the program. For example, that law capped seniors’ catastrophic spending and shifted more costs onto private insurers. Those changes led to higher premiums, which the Biden administration stabilized with a separate three-year pilot program that the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said cost taxpayers a total of nearly $10 billion in 2025 and 2026.
Also, the savings from Medicare drug price negotiation — part of the same law — take longer to be fully realized than the provisions that raise costs. Plus, Republicans’ tax law subsequently exempted or delayed certain drugs from Medicare pricing negotiations.
“I think there's just too many things happening all at once in terms of changes to their Part D spending projections,” said Juliette Cubanski, deputy director of the Program on Medicare Policy at KFF.
However, Cubanski said one nugget of information worth noting is the projected spike in premiums in 2030. Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act capped base Part D premiums increases at 6%, but that expires in 2030, at which point premiums are expected to increase from $46.44 in 2029 to $68.93 in 2030.
foreign drug prices
Europe’s diverging drug-pricing paths
The U.K. and Germany illustrate the diverging approaches of European nations to drug prices as the Trump administration pressures Europe to increase what it pays, Andrew Joseph reports. While Europeans weigh their options, some drugmakers are withholding drugs from certain markets.
The U.K. has promised to spend more on medicines to avoid U.S. tariffs, though that decision has been met with strong pushback from many politicians there. Germany, conversely, has proposed cutting drug spending and increasing industry fees.
It’s not clear which approach will become more prominent as Europeans deal with higher energy and defense costs, which also result from American actions. Read more about how they’re weighing their options.
ada conference
Diabetes association executive apologizes
American Diabetes Association CEO Charles Henderson on Wednesday apologized for the expulsion last weekend of five ADA members for handing out copies of an editorial criticizing federal research cuts, Elizabeth Cooney reports.
The incident was so unexpected and out of character for the conference that former ADA president John Buse initially thought it was a joke.
Read more about the fallout, the apology, and what’s next.
addiction
Medication-assisted treatment falling out of favor
Health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has changed his tune on evidence-based medications for treating opioid addiction since taking office, Lev Facher reports.
In April 2025, Kennedy praised the use of drugs such as buprenorphine and methadone to treat addiction. A year later, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration issued a “Dear Colleague” letter cautioning against the long-term use of those drugs.
Read more about how Republicans again have become hostile toward medication-assisted treatment.
alcohol research
Alcohol report update
Regular readers of this newsletter will recall that on Tuesday a group of researchers published a study warning of potential risks of even light drinking — work the Biden administration had commissioned ahead of new dietary guidelines but did not release.
HHS officials have since tried to distance themselves from the whole thing, telling STAT's Isabella Cueto that the paper was “NOT commissioned by, NOR reviewed, approved, or cleared by” the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.
While it's true that the final study published this week wasn't OK'd by HHS — it was peer-reviewed for the journal — the bulk of the research was done on taxpayers' dime and overseen by federal health officials.
It contains many of the same findings as a draft report made public in 2025. As all that was happening, the House Appropriations Committee on Tuesday passed an HHS spending bill that says the SAMHSA panel can't "study, analyze, consider or report" on adult alcohol consumption as part of its work to prevent underage drinking.
